Krazy Kari Lake has a problem — even many Republicans don’t like her.
The speech showcased the recurring challenge of Lake’s campaign. First in her gubernatorial run, and now in her Senate campaign, she has attached herself to Trump on both policy and style, banking that it will win her the state. But she isn’t getting as much support as Trump is, not even from diehard MAGA fans — and is trailing Gallego in the latest polls by upwards of 6 points.
Lake is “basically Donald Trump with all the negative [and] none of the positives,” said Arizona-based pollster Mike Noble, pointing out that while Trump can run on his perceived policy wins, Lake doesn’t have the same record of holding elected office. “Rallies of adoring fans” and going to places where you get “good crowds” is “not how you win a statewide race in Arizona if you’re not Donald Trump,” said Paul Bentz, a pollster with HighGround, a Phoenix-based political firm. (Lake called some recent polls showing her significantly behind Gallego “absolute garbage” and said her internal polling shows her ahead of him.)
Lake needs moderates and Republicans beyond Trump’s base, and her campaign appears to know that — her Senate run has been marked by awkward attempts to temper her message. But as early voting begins, it’s become increasingly clear that outreach to this group poses a bigger challenge for her, and her MAGA support might not be enough to fill the holes. Among the broader group of Republican and independent voters, she is doing even worse than she is with Trump-first voters: She’s viewed unfavorably by more than 20 percent of overall Republicans and over half of independents, according to a survey of registered voters conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, a nonpartisan polling outfit, in mid-August.
The thing is voters are just tired of her antics. Even the election lawyers roll their eyes at her these days.
NBC reports that Kory Langhofer recently resigned as the chief legal counsel for Trump and the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” operation in Arizona. Meanwhile, all of the other usual GOP election attorneys are keeping their distance.
The situation is so bad that the RNC has had to import California attorney Harmeet Dhillon to Arizona for the final weeks of the campaign.
Three GOP lawyers involved in previous Arizona campaigns told NBC that the problem is Kari Lake — or more specifically, her tendency to see a conspiracy behind every creosote bush.
Between Lake’s refusal to accept her loss in 2022 — yep, she’s still appealing the results — and her penchant for defaming Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, Lake has become something of a full employment act for election lawyers.
But apparently, the act has gotten old — as have the resulting court fines, State Bar of Arizona complaints and presumed humiliation when judges laugh the various conspiracy theories put forth by Lake and Trump right out of court.
Contrast the crazy with the normal-sounding Rep. Ruben Gallego and you can see why this race went from a danger point to possibly the easiest hold of the battleground states.
The question for Rep. Ruben Gallego is whether or not he can hold Krazy Kari Lake far away from the levers of power once more in a tight swing state.
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Ruben Gallego for AZ-SEN
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS SENATE RACE LEANS DEMOCRATIC, with an R+2 PVI
2022 results for the AZ-SEN race.
Arizona during most of my lifetime was a rather conservative state. Yes, it went for Clinton once, but that was a fluke caused chiefly by Ross Perot more than anything. It is only recently that Arizona became competitive. Joe Biden barely won the state by 12,000 votes or so and it is that win that is the basis for my percentage projections below.
The first sign that Arizona was an emerging swing state happened in 2012, when the Senate race was unexpectedly close between Sen. Jeff Flake and Richard Carmona. Romney easily carried the state that year over Obama, but just like other states migrating left, a local race heralded a sea change. It was predicted that Arizona would be a swing state by the end of the decade.
In 2016, McCain romped in the Senate seat yet again, while Clinton contested Arizona against Trump. She pulled within a 48-45 margin, which was the closest a Democratic candidate had come in the state since the fluky Clinton win in the 1990s. It looked as though it were only a matter of time before Arizona would go for the Democratic Party.
2018 brought more hope, as the now reviled Sen. Kyrsten Sinema won a close election for this Senate seat. But that was a blue wave election, and it remained to be seen how a more neutral environment would play out. McCain died in 2018, leading to a 2020 special election concurrent with the presidential election. Sen. Mark Kelly won against appointed Sen. Martha McSally and served out the remainder of the term.
Kelly had to face the voters again in 2022 concurrent with Krazy Kari Lake narrowly losing the governor’s race to SoS Katie Hobbs. Kelly faced off against the repugnant Thiel puppet Blake Masters and trounced the challenger in Arizona terms. Kelly won easily by a 51.4% to 46.5% margin or by about a large 126,000 votes. That ain’t going to happen this year but Gallego is the slight favorite.
Here's where this Arizona race will be won.
- Maricopa County: A combination of McCain Republicans, Hispanic voters, and new arrivals to the state narrowly flipped this county and thus the state. If we win Maricopa County, we should win the state. It isn’t as easy as it seems, as the city of Phoenix and inner suburbs are blue, but the more exurban portions of the county are deeply red.
- Pima County: The city of Tucson is another rich source of Democratic votes, but again it takes a coalition to win this county. There are Native Americans, Hispanic voters, new arrivals, and McCain Republicans to consider. Nothing is easy in this county, as outlying areas and the suburbs trend red. We need about 58% of the vote here to offset other areas of the state.
- Coconino County and the Reservations: The northern section of the state contains the critical votes of Flagstaff/Sedona and the Native American reservations. Both votes were supercharged in 2020, and Ruben Gallego will have to rely on them yet again in order to win. We need to win Coconino County with about 61%, get 45% in Navajo County, and win 2:1 in Apache County.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down or we will lose.
- Mohave and Yavapai Counties: These are where the insurrectionists, cranks, retirees, and California conservative transplants live in Arizona. These two counties are a rich source of conservative votes, and they may be the reason Gallego loses the race. He has to hold Kari Lake to 63% of the vote in Yavapai and 75% in Mohave, or he will have serious problems.
- Pinal and Gila Counties: These two counties in central Arizona are quite Republican, though Pinal County is growing and changing as commuters settle between the two big metro areas. Ruben Gallego needs to limit Kari Lake to 66% of the vote in Gila County and 58% of the vote in Pinal County to ensure a victory in the state overall.
- Southeastern Arizona: Graham, Greenlee, and Cochise Counties are all reliably Republican these days, although when the mining unions mattered they tended to vote Democratic (as the Pinto Democrats). Gallego will have to limit his losses in this section of the state, though some counties are sparsely populated.
Rep. Ruben Gallego: The Latino Marine
Rep. Ruben Gallego was a progressive in the House but he will moderate his positions for the Senate.
Rep. Ruben Gallego was born in Chicago in 1979 to a Colombian mother and a Mexican father. He was raised by that mother along with his three sisters in Evergreen Park, Illinois. He attended Harvard University and became a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. He graduated from that prestigious institution in 2004 with a degree in international relations.
Gallego served in the US Marine Corps from 2002 to 2006. He was a member of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines — serving as a lance corporal. The 3/25 lost 46 marines in late 2005 and early 2006 including Gallego’s best friend while deployed to Iraq. He wrote a memoir titled They Called Us Lucky that documents his horrifying experiences in the conflict.
Gallego moved to the Phoenix area and became involved in local politics in 2007. He would first run for office himself in 2010 for the Arizona State House. He won and was named a distinguished freshman lawmaker for leading the charge to repeal the racist SB1070 immigration bill and for passing a bill to give in-state tuition to veterans. He was elected Assistant Minority Leader in 2012 in his second term in office.
Rep. Ruben Gallego would run for Congress in 2014 when longtime Rep. Ed Pastor retired. He won the Democratic primary — the real contest in this blue district — with 48.9% of the vote against multiple other candidates. He never dipped below 70% of the vote in any of his re-election campaigns after winning 73% of the vote in the 2014 general election.
Gallego has made himself a reputation as a combative progressive in the House of Representatives. This is what caused many outside groups to try and recruit him to run against wayward Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in late 2022. Since Sinema left the race, Gallego has moderated many of his positions in order to better reflect the politics of the purple state of Arizona. The man who once embraced and campaigned with Bernie Sanders now holds him at bay because that is what is necessary to win this state.
Gallego says he is running "to defend our Democracy, hold corrupt politicians accountable, and preserve a woman’s right to have an abortion." Gallego says he "took advantage of the things Democrats championed and the people of our country provided: Pell Grants and school lunch programs to name two," and that he says his political and military service as an opportunity to repay that debt.
Gallego is leaning heavily into his profile as a Latino Marine veteran to win over certain types of voters (Latinos and McCain Republicans) that may be skeptical of MVP Harris. That’s likely why he is polling better than her in the state of Arizona.
Kari Lake: You Can’t Spell Crazy Without (R-AZ)
When I was in Arizona I always thought something was off about her. Now we know what it is.
Kari Lake was born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1969. She grew up in the state of Iowa as her parents were a social studies teacher and a nurse respectively. Lake would graduate from the University of Iowa with a journalism degree. She bounced around from TV station to TV station until she was finally hired by FOX10 news in Phoenix, Arizona as an evening news anchor in 1999. She was with that news organization for nearly 22 years before departing after it surfaced she was at CPAC — and not as a journalist.
In her last years at KSAZ FOX10, Lake developed a reputation for conspiracy theory promotion and for being a provocateur. She dissed the Red for Ed movement in 2018 as a “big push to legalize pot” instead of a raise for teachers. She was caught sharing information about her Parler account in late 2019. She continually shared COVID-19 misinformation on social media in early 2020 at the height of the pandemic. She became a divisive figure in the newsroom during her last years at the station.
Kari Lake has also wandered around politically throughout the years. She’s been a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat at various times based upon the political winds. She finally found a political home in the MAGA movement which fed into her conspiratorial thinking already starting to develop. As far as I am concerned, the MAGA movement can have her as long as they want.
Kari Lake ran for the governor of Arizona in 2022 and won the GOP primary through peddling crazy conspiracy theories, insisting that the 2020 election was stolen, and by opposing COVID-19 mandates. Shortly after the primary win, Lake excoriated the McCain wing of the Republican Party, insisting that those who follow McCain could “get the Hell out of the party”. Lake managed to alienate enough people to lose the gubernatorial race by about 17,000 votes.
Lake then dragged the election loss out as far as possible. She still hasn’t conceded to Gov. Katie Hobbs and insists that she is the rightful governor of Arizona. She has slapped so many lawsuits against the result that it is impossible to list them all here. Her lawyers have been repeatedly sanctioned for wasting time in the courts and for falsely filing lawsuits. These actions are the ones that have solidified the loser stink upon her and have alienated people that could be open to voting for her. She is trying to be more conciliatory towards fellow Republicans in her 2024 run but the damage has already been done.
Lake is far-right on the issues as evidenced mostly by her stance on abortion rights. She’s still trying to etch-a-sketch her abhorrent record on the issue but clips like this one cannot be erased.
She tried for a while to wriggle her way out of a national abortion ban and her support for the 1864 extreme Arizona abortion ban but she found her way back to support of those policies really quickly.
Lake also meets frequently with far-right white supremacists and militia figures. For instance, this clip surfaced in April 2024 from Lake Havasu where Lake urges the far-right denizens of the city or arm themselves for the election.
Lake is also a huge hypocrite when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. She used to attend drag shows but sought to ban them in Arizona under the guise of them being harmful to children. She even attended one with her daughter who was a minor at the time. Despite being for transgender youth transitioning in a 2015 social media post, Lake reversed course for her 2022 campaign.
On other issues, Lake is still abhorrent. She claims that Australia “has no freedom” thanks to strict gun safety laws on the books there. She is a huge fan of the 2nd amendment and would vote down even the most minor of gun safety bills. She would’ve unilaterally deported undocumented immigrants and built the wall if elected as governor of Arizona.
You cannot spell crazy without (R-AZ), and Kari Lake is the queen of the kooks right now in the state. Hopefully, Arizonans have the sense to reject her a second time.
How Can You Help?
If Rep. Ruben Gallego does manage to lose, it won’t be because he didn’t raise enough money. He raised an eye-popping $21.5M in the Q3 reporting period of 2024 and has further raised about $12-13M since then. He really no longer needs the money but late donations are like lemonade. Feel free to chuck a few bucks his way by donating at the top or bottom of the article.
I keep getting donation solicitation spam texts from the Gallego campaign (I used to live in Arizona) stating that he is currently being outspent and that Kari Lake’s allies have finally begun to unleash a barrage of ads against him. I don’t know how true that is but I do know that plenty of money is being spent by both sides on this race.
If you have the time, make some calls into Arizona to remind people to vote for Ruben Gallego and for MVP Harris. Check out other ways to volunteer using Mobilize (enter in your ZIP code for the closest events) if you live in Arizona. With the election shaping up to be a very close one, let’s put it all out on the field and give it one final push!
I once thought Rep. Ruben Gallego was too liberal to be elected statewide in Arizona. I thought his time was about 6 years from now as the state continues to diversify and grow. I was wrong and I am happy that Gallego looks likely to win this race. He was able to moderate his stances enough while still providing a contrast from Krazy Kari Lake.
Lake was NOT the pick Arizona Republicans should have made but they are now a crazy bunch of misanthropes. If they had gone with Mark Lamb (a sheriff in Pinal County) they very easily could have won this race even though Lamb is just as crazy as Kari Lake. It is that loser stench and her tiresome antics that have alienated even some MAGA Republicans.
Polling is looking very good for Gallego right now. The closest (GOP-leaning) poll still has him at 50% of the vote and up 4 points. That’s a commanding position to be in and it is why the race is my 8th most likely Senate seat to flip. It was as high as #3 in the spring when it looked like Sinema would cause a three-way race.
The question for Rep. Ruben Gallego is whether he can keep Krazy Kari Lake at bay even if MVP Harris fails to win Arizona.
Ruben Gallego for AZ-SEN
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